Dreaming of His Pen Pal's Kiss - Jessie Gussman Page 0,42
to deal with. The thoughts of his parents arguing about who had to take him ran through his mind, plus being shuffled around various relatives and friends who would have preferred him not be with them.
Some of them were pretty obvious and dropped him off at someone else’s house while they took their “real” children to special events or had family time with just their birth children.
But as Journee shaped the tree and he used the glue gun where she indicated, he figured that she probably just dealt with things slightly different than he did.
Where he took all of those people who didn’t want him and replaced them with football, doing his best to excel in that area, she had developed empathy for others who were treated like her.
Even if they were ugly Christmas decorations.
“I’m sorry. I got too serious, and you got quiet,” she said, carefully setting a bulb on the line of hot glue he’d squeezed out and holding it there while the glue cooled.
“You don’t need to apologize. I was just thinking that probably we both have things in our childhood that shaped us, and where I kind of turned to football, you just developed empathy. Neither one of us were wrong. We handled things differently.”
“You got locked in a closet?” Her voice held surprise.
“No. I’m just like a million other kids out there whose parents didn’t really want them. That marks a kid.” He didn’t want to get into the details. They’d been having so much fun he wanted to think of something light and fluffy to talk about.
But her face scrunched up, and that empathy she had for the ugly Christmas decoration was directed at him. He had to admit, better empathy than pity.
“Don’t feel bad for me. I can’t say it was the best thing that ever happened to me, but I really do think that I wouldn’t be a pro ballplayer today if I hadn’t had the scrappy childhood I had. It takes a lot of grit to be where I am. Especially since I didn’t have a lot of the natural talent a lot of the other guys I play with have. Some of them practice half as much as I do, less even, and it just all comes naturally to them. And then there’s me. No matter how much I practice and how well everyone says I do in games, sometimes I feel like I’m just barely above average.”
She huffed at that, placing a purple bulb, with what looked like a walrus on it, next to a red one. “I hardly think that you would be a pro ballplayer if you were just barely above average. In fact, from what I’m gathering from listening to other people’s conversations, you’re actually a pretty big deal.”
“You don’t watch football, do you?”
“No.” Her look was apologetic before she focused back on the hodgepodge of decorations that were slowly forming their way into being shaped like a tree. “Our family was all about cowboys. I could tell you the top guys on the rodeo circuit right now. Actually, Martin would have been one of those fellows that I would have named except he just retired. He’s a pretty good bareback bronc rider.”
“Retired? He get hurt?”
Her fingers, delicately wrapping a purple thread around the creases in the bulbs—somehow it seemed to blend perfectly with the kaleidoscope of colors—flexed and moved gracefully. He’d never thought of fingers as graceful before.
“I don’t think so.” She looked over her shoulder as though checking to see where Blakely or Martin were in the crowd of onlookers. “He’s not telling anyone, but I kinda got the impression that he was ready to settle down, and he likely found love. And when you love someone, you put them first.”
He snorted. There was a lot of derision in that snort that he hadn’t really meant to show. “A man can’t put anything ahead of his career. You just can’t. Even a woman, if she wants to do well, everything else has to come second. I think that’s probably why a lot of women aren’t in top jobs, not because they can’t, but because they put their family first. Men have less trouble doing that.”
Her eyes kinda snapped at him, and he knew the whole woman/man thing was a touchy subject. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything, but he felt like it served his point.
“There’s nothing wrong with putting your family first. Maybe you should find a different career if you can’t manage to